Happy Earth Day, Mother Earth

Oh, mother earth,
With your fields of green
Once more laid down by the hungry hand
How long can you give and not receive
And feed this world ruled by greed
Oh, ball of fire
In the summer sky
Your healing light, your parade of days
Are they betrayed by the men of power
Who hold this world in their changing hands
Oh, freedom land
Can [...]

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Global warming legacy???

I’ve been trying not to blog about politics but every now and then I succumb to the odd irresistible headline. Today’s NYT science blog, Dot Earth, headlines with this jewel that nearly made me choke on my tea: “President Appears to Seek a Warming Legacy.” (registration might be required for the NYT.)
Wait, wait….as in GLOBAL [...]

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We are what is wrong, and we must make it right

Wow. Here’s Al Gore’s Nobel Lecture from yesterday. I can’t paste it in, it seems, without incurring the wrath of the Nobel Committee. Still, click through and read it in its entirety. It’s worth it.
Photo courtesy of the Associated Press.

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Sustainable Sites gaining steam

Finally!! A group has come together to “standardize” the definition of a sustainable landscape. The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, the United States Botanic Garden and other organizations have created a partnership called the Sustainable Sites Initiative to develop guidelines and standards for [...]

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Seed banks: the ultimate seed savers

In case of a global catastrophe, what happens to our plants? What would happen if a plant species was wiped out due to global warming, epidemics, species extinction, or a weather disaster? What if genetically modified seeds contaminate the last strain of  an important heirloom crop? Some smart scientists figured out a long time [...]

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A walk in the woods

This past weekend I participated in a seminar called 21st Century Landscape Literacy at Apeiron Institute for Environmental Living in Coventry, RI. Apeiron’s mission is to promote sustainable living practices and ecologically healthy communities in southeastern New England. On their property, they’ve built an eco-house using green building practices. (You can take a virtual tour [...]

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An ode to meadows & grasslands

A study released yesterday by the National Audubon Society found that the populations of many common birds have taken a nosedive, primarily due to habitat loss:
The dramatic declines are attributed to the loss of grasslands, healthy forests and wetlands, and other critical habitats from multiple environmental threats such as sprawl, energy development, and the [...]

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Great resource on gardening and global warming

The National Wildlife Federation (NWF) has a lot of interesting programs and information for “citizen scientists” and everyday nature advocates. A recent entry that’s pretty impressive is The Gardener’s Guide to Global Warming. They do a really good job of tying together many of the issues facing gardeners as global climate change becomes a [...]

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Good riddance Julie MacDonald

Although my yoga teacher is laboring to impress upon me the concept of ahimsa, which means non-violence in thoughts as well as deeds, I am unable to control my gloating and self-satisfaction over Julie MacDonald’s recent resignation as public enemy of wildlife #1 deputy assistant secretary of the Department of Fish & Wildlife Service. Bwaa [...]

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Species evolution due to climate change

Today’s Boston Globe carried an interesting article about how climate change has caused and will continue to cause species to evolve as they adapt to new conditions. It seems that scientists have identified five species that have already evolved due to climate change: the pitcher plant mosquito; Canadian red squirrels; the European blackcap (a [...]

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The Grey Lady weighs in

If it seems like I’m obsessed with the weather, it’s because I am. Curt and I went on a CANOE RIDE yesterday. In New England, in January. (The blog header shows what the same lake looked like a year ago.) But rest easy everyone, because the New York Times’s Maria Newman wrote yesterday that the [...]

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More about our bizarre warm winter

A couple of days ago, I noted the warm weather but mentioned that we were “back on track” for cold weather. Wrong–today’s high is supposed to be 58 degrees F. The weather is so weirdly warm that it’s turned into a topic that everyone’s talking (and writing) about. From yesterday’s Providence Journal, Michelle Lee [...]

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Climate change & growing zones

2006 in many ways was the year of recognition that global climate change is not a liberal fantasy. Thanks in no small measure to Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and to incontrovertible evidence that the Earth is changing, it became harder and harder to deny the reality of climate change. This was the year that [...]

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Crabapple blossoms?

Taken in Providence on Dec. 28th, this photo of a blooming crabapple tree speaks volumes about the unseasonably warm fall and winter that we’ve had here in New England thus far. I think we’re back “on track” though–it’s been very cold the last couple of days and we even had snow flurries yesterday. Best wishes [...]

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U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service changes its mind

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service today announced that it’s withdrawing its proposal to list the Graham’s penstemon (Penstemon grahamii) as an endangered species under the EPA’s Endangered Species Act, says the Associated Press.
A member of the snapdragon family, the lavender wildflower is found only in certain areas of northwestern Colorado and northeastern Utah–all owned [...]

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